Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law
oag.ca.gov
oag.ca.gov
You can have a debate about how to display those items on a price list, but everyone knows about them and they are expected. The whole point of this bill is to prevent bait-and-switch, where loads of unknown or variable fees are tacked on after the price is initially shown.
The one caveat I'd say about a tip is if it's mandatory. E.g. if a place requires a minimum tip amount for large parties, it's no longer a tip, it's appropriately called a service charge.
And that matters if you have to be careful about spending. Also, "everyone knows about them", really? If it's so easy to "know" the local tax rate for various things, why isn't it easy to label them?
See the rest of the world, where even young kids can go shopping. If you give them 5 <amount of currency>, and the item they want is less than 5, or they want five of something that is 1, they can buy it.
Just by default you don’t have to think about it, and it shows up in all the places if should - government included.
What's the default tip, that is to say, what's the max you are allowed to retract? Is it the same everywhere or does the default vary by restaurant? I could see the appeal to laziness resulting in more consistent tipping, but also lower tips for exceptional/attractive/flirty waitstaff.
Ultimately, I'd much rather do away with tipping entirely. I grew up never questioning it until I spent some time in places where tipping just wasn't a thing, and I've resented it ever since.
Wages of workers is included, just like the other overheads are. If you want to give a gift to someone -- a tip -- how could that possibly be even known in advance.
This particular new law is not attempting to address that. Maybe it should. But maybe doing so would be biting off too much, and its sponsors believe it would never pass if they tried that.
The purpose of this law is much less ambitious, but that's fine. Incremental improvements are better than no improvements. I am pleased that now hotels can't spring daily "resort fees" on guests after they show up for their reservation. That sort of thing.
If you live in the United States, you know that a) listed prices rarely include tax, and b) for an annoyingly large number of things, you will be expected to add a tip. If you live here and don't know that, you are not particularly well-equipped to operate in the real world, and you should learn. If you don't live here but are visiting, it's unfortunate that you might not know about these quirks of American capitalism, but the law is not really aimed at you. Sorry, but our quality-of-life laws are tailored to people who live here first and foremost.
> If it's so easy to "know" the local tax rate for various things, why isn't it easy to label them?
It's not about being easy. It's about stupid psychological effects. If I list my price tax-inclusive, and my competitor lists theirs without the tax (but ultimately will charge the same price as I will), my competitor will get more business than I will. It's dumb, but that's human psychology for you.
> See the rest of the world, where even young kids can go shopping.
Young kids can shop here just as well. They just have an extra step to learn. They deal with it just fine; kids are smart and adaptable.
Disagreed as well. With Taxes, literally 100% of all items have the same convention that is not "bait and switch".
For example, the one common tax in the US that is hidden in the price is tax on gasoline. I think it would be better to specifically call this out, especially since gas taxes can vary so much by jurisdiction. I mean, pretty much all adults where I live know our sales tax rate is 8.25%, but I have actually no clue what my per-gallon tax on gas is.
Displaying THE PRICE on products is so amazingly basic that it's always mind blowing seeing Americans think this is a complicated question. It's not. If I have to pay 5 dollars at checkout THEN THE PRICE IS FIVE DOLLARS.
Not the strongest argument, but there it is.
A college friend worked at a pizza place that straddled a county line. One county had its own sales tax; the other did not. The register was in the back of the store to take advantage of this (the location of the register was considered the point of sale for tax purposes). Question: would it have been legal for them to advertise a price in the higher-tax-county part of the store that only applied if you bought the pizza from the outher county?
Local sales tax and national VAT are similar, but they don't work that much alike in practice.
While I wouldn’t mind if most ads just disappeared I don’t see how effectively banning businesses from advertising their prices would benefit the consumers.
If we zoom out of the “uniquely American issue” mindset for a second and look at how this is solved elsewhere, then it becomes clear that it doesn’t have to be an issue.
In this day and age plenty of multinational corporations advertise a euro price that applies for all the countries in Europe that carry the euro. This is a situation where companies have to account for varying VAT rates.
The solution? Companies take this into account w/r/t their margins when advertising a euro price that applies to all euro countries.
In the US however it’s even less of an issue. I’ve noticed as a European that when you watch TV here in the US many ads are hyper localized, mentioning the closest local store. If they can do that then they can list the price the item has at that store.
The real reason the full price including taxes isn’t used is because companies can make it look cheaper without hurting their margins, thus draw in more customers.
Or they just recalculate the price based on you shipping info.
It would be rather absurd to expect companies to just “account” for an up to 7% difference in tax rates between different countries.
> TV here in the US many ads are hyper localized
While there are many local channels in some states the tax rate might even differ between counties or towns.
> The real reason the full price including taxes isn’t used is because companies can make it look cheaper without hurting their margins, thus draw in more customers.
Conjecture. Also you’re assuming that most people are incapable of doing basic math.
> somewhat
You can, but one side is going to be spouting garbage. Listing the actual total cost to the purchaser is so obviously better than not doing so.
Seems to me giving people a shock at the checkout is a particularly evil way of making taxes explicit. It isn't like the taxes aren't broken down on EU receipts for those who care; in fact it's quite explicit.
In the EU the receipt must show what amount of the price was VAT.
This is so that companies can deduct the VAT in taxation (basically only the final consumer of the product/service pays VAT. Everyone else in the chain can deduct it in taxation)
We know them generally enough to get by. That doesn’t mean calculating them precisely is a peach.
There have been stores that tried to differentiate on the basis of all-in pricing. It fails. Unless you’re paying cash or precisely monitoring spending, it doesn’t matter. (There is also a transparency argument in knowing how much is going to the business versus state.)
In summary, it’s not an issue for most Americans. (When I travel in Europe, having all-in prices doesn’t even remotely occur as a perk.) And there are ideological reasons that resonate with many Americans that are against it. Nobody to fight for it, a vocal minority against; seems like a silly hill to die on.
Because you pay the tax from the total of your purchase and not from each item separately. E.g. in Santa Monica, CA sales tax is 10.25%, a price on a $4.95 item with tax included would be $5.46 but on 10x of these items it's just $54.58.
Wouldn't it be far better to establish a rock solid precedent that the price there is the price you pay? Every exception that remains is an opportunity for weasels to justify why they are also the very important exception to the rule.
You sure that's worth a rounding error?
I don't think so, there are more apparent reasons listed in this thread already. I am just pointing that rolling a sales tax into price is not as simple as some imagine. I imagine VAT is accounted differently so it could be rolled into the price without this kind of error but I've never dealt with VAT so I can only speculate.
>Wouldn't it be far better to establish a rock solid precedent that the price there is the price you pay?
For whom? I don't see how it would be better for me but as somebody else noticed, the retailers are free to roll the tax into the price, the fact that they don't do this might be a pretty solid indication that it's not better?
Nope. VAT has complicated rounding rules too. Turns out it actually is still easy to roll it into the price.
> as somebody else noticed, the retailers are free to roll the tax into the price, the fact that they don't do this might be a pretty solid indication that it's not better?
It's a lemon market. It's better for the customer if the actual price is displayed up front, but the customer has no way of knowing which shops are advertising real prices and which aren't.
You mean it's a market with information asymmetry? How so? Customers know both that the sales taxes exist and their magnitude. If you think it's a great idea you can put big sign saying on your shop/in your ad "inc. tax" instead of "plus tax", which is on most advertisements already. Surely customers could read it.
Customers have a sense that they exist and a vague idea of their magnitude, perhaps. They don't calculate them, at best they compare the advertised number - remember most customers are average intelligence or below.
In the US even young kids can go shopping too. If you give them $5 + <tax on $5>. They can then buy any item whose price tag says $5 or less or 5 of any $1 item.
If you don't want to have to know the sales tax for your location, I believe the highest sales tax in the US is under 11% so just give the kid $5.55.
Pretty much everywhere else I've travelled in the world, the price on the shelf is the price you pay, even when tax changes based on what something is classified as (to whit that fun legal case of "is a jaffa cake a cake or a biscuit").
For some absolutely bizarre self-hating reason, the US has decided that, no, your experience should be "Oh wait, now I've got to go and add some seemingly random sales tax that I can't likely predict in advance, and won't know until I've rung everything up".
You're overlooking the context. Someone said it was easy to let young children go shopping in places where taxes are included in the sticker price because you can give the kid $5 and the kid knows they can buy any item with a sticker price that does not exceed that or a combination of cheaper items whose sticker prices do not sum to more than 5$.
The implication was that this is harder for young children in the US, presumably because young children won't be able to do the complicated mathematical finagling that the rest of the world apparently thinks Americans do every time they go to the store.
My point is that in the US you just give the child $5 plus enough to cover tax, and then the child can use exactly the same approach those kids elsewhere use: if sum of sticker prices <= $5 they have enough money.
It's just one of many little ways that the US operates that's profoundly at odds with a positive experience for citizens. You _could_ have the prices right there in the stores. You _could_ structure your tax system such that the prices can actually be done that way and you don't get the rounding fun that you see mentioned elsewhere in this thread. However, because you do this "hide the actual price" there's zero incentive to actually implement tax approaches that are nicer as a citizen/consumer.
If you'll forgive a slight diversion, it's a similar deal with tax incentives. In a lot of countries around the world, they structure it such that the tax incentives happen at time of purchase, so e.g. a $2,500 rebate would result in you, as the buyer, buying at price $2,500 less than it would have been otherwise. You never see that $2,500 at all, you just see a much cheaper sticker price. It's end user focused, like you'd think a government for the citizens, by the citizens, would be.
The US approaches it such that you have to actually have the money spare up front, to eventually get it back (or mess about with your monthly withholding to try to claw it back that way, quicker). This penalises poorer citizens, who otherwise might have been able to afford to buy whatever thing it is that they could potentially afford. You essentially miss out on the tax incentives the government comes up with, unless you happen to be rich enough to afford a well versed tax accountant, or have enough luxury of time to sit there and work through all the possible rebates you might be eligible for. Neither of which poor or disadvantaged people tend to have.
With this being the way that tax incentives have long been done, there's no real incentive to try to do it any other way, even though it would be better for literally every citizen, rich and poor alike, with the possible exception of tax accountants. You'd all get specific rebates you were entitled for.
Cook county tax 2.75% Illinois state tax 6.25% Chicago city tax 1.25%
This thing I bought had a sticker price of $11.90
How much did I pay?
and depends on what you're buying. See sugar taxes, takeout taxes, restaurant taxes, etc.
Also, how do you know if tip is applied before or after taxes?
adults in our country assume a $1 and a $5 price tag is tax inclusive. the receipts show it.
how you gonna tell the kid it's priced at $1 but you gotta pay more than $1 because it isn't tax inclusive? lol
The only advantage to not including taxes is that people spend more money. This is marginally better for stores and worse for everyone else.
Theres no genuine benefit to society for not including taxes in the posted price.
While at this point it makes more sense to come up with a new law/methodology, I understand the thought process. If an item is $5 final price you don't know how much the tax actually was. The taxes can be raised easily and only those paying close attention to local or state politics would know. It's a backstop against government greed.
Again, I think we could reform this tax code and tip culture. However, I believe you legally have to include the tax. Maybe you simply should only be able to advertise the final price, but on the receipt it shows the tax rate.
Having the money 'in your hand' and then having to write a check for thousands of dollars feels much different. The guillotines would appear quickly.
And it still widely works - queue all the folks happy about ‘getting their money from the gov’t’ in the form of their tax refund at the end of the year.
I think the reason taxes aren’t included are because lower prices make people buy more. Similar to $4.99 sells more than $5.
If the sales tax is 9.25%, round up to 10%, so $1 on every hundred.
I walk into a store and buy something for $7.32. Ok, I know in my head the tax is about $0.70, so cool, it’s be “about” $8.
That’s all I need to know. I don’t carry rolls of Pennie’s around so I’m not worried about the cents. He’ll, when was the last time you paid in cash?
It’s the same with Fahrenheit or miles. It’s a simple calculation, not a massive obstacle that holds Americans back from daily living or technological advances.
Case in point, I asked for 1/3 lb of deli meat yesterday at the grocery store, and received 0.41 lbs. Worse, the worker was concerned that they hadn’t given me enough.
Your example is actually a great illustration of why expecting people to calculate taxes in their head doesn't work. If you are trying to buy a product priced at $7.32, you can't easily tell whether $8 is enough. No one should have to multiply 9.25 by 7.32 in their head to know whether they can buy something.
Enough with this insanity. If the price is $8, then $8 should be enough!
'Every one knows' is a very US centric view, which even I doubt is true given the degree of illiteracy and math deficiency in the overall population.
If we were talking about, say, a French law, I would expect the default assumption to be French standards and customs.
You do realise you are travelling to a foreign country, right? This rings to me like Americans who travel to Spain and complain about the siesta, or Argentina and how late they dine.
Lots of local government means taxes change over smaller distances in America than most of the world. Also, most retailers here use paper labels—a result of historically-low inflation expectations. It’s easier to implement that complexity at check out than on the shelves. (I’d also guess that America’s credit card use means more check-out stations are digital than in much of the world.)
Add to that a cultural distrust of taxation and government, a decreasing tendency to use cash and a higher income per capita and you have a genuine difference in preferences.
> cultural distrust of taxation and government
> a decreasing tendency to use cash
> higher income per capita
Really don't see how any of the points above are an obstacle to putting the ~actual~ price of a product on paper.
> Also, most retailers here use paper labels
Great! Makes it even easier to printout the actual price. 1) Retrieve base price from database 2) Add local tax 3) Add whatever other "hidden" cost is needed 4) Printout label.
The pieces of paper are in multiple places. The bill is calculated in one place. Doing things in multiple places is more costly and error prone than doing it in one. (Also, the paper being physical means a physical person must update it. The POS can be remotely managed.)
Here is New York State's guide on clothing and footwear taxes [1]. (It's particularly well documented.) If any one of those counties makes a change, you're now proposing someone run through the entire store to update the affected labels or else risk lying about the price. That's manageable for a multinational. It's bonkers for a small shop owner. Instead, their POS is remotely updated (worst case, they get a bulletin to punch in a code) and when the barcode is scanned, the system figures out whether it's $110 or less and if it's really a costume or not.
If consumers valued it, tax-inclusive pricing might be worth the effort. But in America, we don't. The number isn't big enough, and I'm swiping or tapping either way. (Cash-only stores do tend to be tax inclusive, at least in New York, but that's because they're usually not paying the whole tax.) As I said, I can't remember finding it helpful when I travel to tax-inclusive priced countries. Surprising as it may seem, this really is simply a cultural preference. No right answer.
[1] https://www.tax.ny.gov/pdf/publications/sales/pub718c.pdf
This isn't free. That's someone's time and energy spent on something I, as the consumer, don't care about. Why? I'd much rather have that person available to help, ready at the counter or frankly at home or in a park enjoying their life.
What has meaning for you doesn't for me. I don't value having a precise price at selection versus purchase. At all. Like most Americans. That doesn't mean I don't see the value in your argument, just that I reject it as something that matters to me.
> What seems 'bonkers' to you has been standard practice in most of the world for decades
Not remotely comparable in terms of rulebook complexity. Also, income: if you want to find tax-inclusive round pricing in America, go to impoverished neighborhoods. There, every nickel counts and folks pay cash--it makes sense to spend the effort to precisely message pricing ex ante.
Also, in most of the world posted prices either aren't a thing or are completely negotiable. Haggling at the point of sale isn't a thing in day-to-day America.
Not to mention the vast amount of online shopping Americans do, where it would be trivial to include a local sales tax. (Every online store I'm aware of already immediately asks for your location and tells you to search for the nearest location anyways.)
I also reject the idea that most Americans wouldn't value this. I would bet money most Americans would prefer it -- they just aren't aware that other countries are capable of doing things better.
It's not free but it is negligible relative to routine relabelling. How many times do you think the tax rate changes per year? Maybe twice, at most, if the government budget is facing some major upheaval. More likely is every few years. Compared to the number of times the store will put things on sale or change the prices, that is negligible.
That's not true. I would guess the vast majority of consumers would at least slightly prefer that the tax be included in the display price. The problem is those consumers aren't an organized interest group, whereas retailers are. It's not a "cultural preference"--it's just the inability of the political system to address large but diffuse problems.
Furthermore, literally everywhere I’ve lived in America, I had 3+ local sales tax rates within my typical shopping range and it’s nice to know which areas have lower rates so I can preferentially make larger shopping trips there.
In the current system, to get that information you have to compare the label cost to the cost you paid. How is that more simple and convenient than looking up sales taxes in your area, or mandating they be displayed on labels in addition to price?
You can, if you change your prices in every state so that with added taxes, it adds up to $5 for the consumer. We don't have to accommodate our system of sales taxes to make it more convenient for national corporations to make $5 foot-long campaigns.
sorry, no, it doesn't. Taxes, by law, must be calculated at the point of sale. A penny on each of 5 items could sum to enough to bump the tax on the overal total by a penny. You're not allowed to "round" that extra tax away by computing the tax individually on the items.
Apropos of nothing, but I loved that about the place
Thing is, leaving aside foreigners, there seems to be such an intrinsic contradiction between the 'everyone knows' and the 'it is so complex we can't even put it on the store shelf price label'.
Over here (Europe) for better or worse near 100% store checkouts are digital, regardless of wether you pay with credit or debit card. We get the correct price we will pay displayed on store shelves. We get a breakout of tax on the PoS ticket. In most places we also get a breakout of the price and the promo on the ticket (as in e.g. buy 2 get one free promos).
Yes. I am biased by experience, but I fail to see how not knowing how much you will pay for someting when and where you make the decision to buy it, that is when you take it of the shelf and put it in your cart, can be an advantage you would argue for.
I have lived in the US my whole life and I can't remember that last time I left a tip for anything besides a place that you sit down to eat and someone brings you food.
My first job was delivering pizza and that is something with a long social norm of tipping. A tip was a nice bonus but if someone didn't tip it didn't matter because someone else people would tip an irrationally large amount. I didn't think bad of those that didn't tip, I just assumed they were that broke.
It is not that "every one knows" it is that no one cares about this in the real world the way they do when grandstanding on social media.
Basically it should be illegal to not include any required monthly fee in an advertised price.
Displayed prices should be the price you have to pay - full stop. No math required or knowledge of local municipal/state/federal tax structures, no required knowledge of local cultural expectations around tipping. Just pay the price. Just because you're accustomed to tax/tip additions doesn't mean they are in any way a good thing that should be preserved.
Because we get that now on most (if not all) grocery stores and retailers. I can see what items in my grocery receipt were charged which of the various local taxes and can dispute them. I've had groceries miss-categorized and considered prepared food which carries a local tax in my area, but they were not prepared foods and should not have been taxed.
Having a full price up front isn't the magical cure a lot of people paint it as.
And yes they are on the menu, but they are hidden on at the end in fine print. I don't think that is correct.
Same goes for say renting a jet-ski. They advertise price X. I select the venue based on advertisement X, because it is cheaper than its neighbor. But the venue tacks on a mandatory $30 refilling fee that I cannot get rid of.
Or a hotel and their resort fees. The only reason it is separate is to show a lower price on the comparison sites.
If it's mandatory, it should be in the price, at least then I can compare.
And I believe that putting a 3% credit card surcharge should also be banned. If they put in a 3% cash discount, I'm fine with that. At least it allows me to compare prices.
The taxes should be a separate line item on all purchases, so people can see what the taxes are.
I do also like how Costco breaks down the taxes on liquor, as far as I know those taxes existed before privatization of liquor sales in Washington, its just they were hidden in the "tax in" prices Washington State Liquor stores would post.
And of course none of this is incompatible with still printing one big-print all-inclusive price.
I mean, they have a lot of money and want more. That's greed. You can argue that you're personally okay with them being greedy, or even channel your inner Gordon Gekko and say that you personally think greed is good, but you can't argue it isn't greedy.
edit: it's been 99c for 3 decades, since they started business https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-04-12/az-iced-te...
I think the 99c price was originally for convenience stores because there were sales of 5 for $2 at Walgreens in 2018.
It sounds like you live in a heavily subsidized market - probably best not to try to draw generalizations about inflation from your specific circumstances, they are atypical.
I'm in Ireland, I'd say a good third of printed on labels are not even in the right currency, as companies have a single UK and Ireland SKU. It's also understood that generally it's the retailer that sets pricing, not the manfucturer, so when a book has $9.99/£8.99 printed on it and a store sticker with €12.99, nobody is confused that that's not the exchange rates, or about which price they'll pay.
The reason I think listing taxes separately is OK is because (a) it is not something that the business itself has any choice over, and (b) all businesses have to tax the same for equivalent services. I think listing the taxes separately serves an important purpose to remind the purchaser about where your payments are actually going. If you don't like the fact that you have to pay 3 different taxes, well, if enough other people agree with you, you can change that.
I'd be OK with listing taxes up front (but I will say that restaurants I've been to always highlight any mandatory fees besides normal sales tax on the menu) but I'm absolutely in favor of breaking out the cost of government services on the bill.
but I will say that restaurants I've been to always highlight any mandatory fees besides normal sales tax on the menu
Here's a typical example (click on 'menu'): https://maps.app.goo.gl/XS3puQEttQVtTW1FA
Tartine hides the 5% surcharge at the bottom of the menu in smaller font. It's also one of three bullets: the first and third are about food safety.
What's the rationale for putting the surcharge bullet in between the two food safety bullets?
Also: if you order online from Tartine, you won't see the surcharge until you go to check out. And if you order from one of the handwritten 'daily specials' signs, you won't see the surcharge until you pay.
(Using Tartine as an example. It's not unique.)
FWIW, I think those kinds of "5% employee surcharge" fees are total bullshit and should be included in the price. The only reason "fees" should ever be pulled out separately are if they're optional, variable, or depend on something besides the unit cost on the product.
I didn't read the full bill but I'm assuming since the required charge is fully visible, this restaurant would be fine
You can list post tax price and then write components if you so please. But showing price without tax is just attempt to look cheaper.
(a) is really just like the price of basically all of utilities, and all the indirect taxes paid on salaries... the only difference is that they are not directly calculated on turnover. Should we also break that out? (b) is actually an argument in favour of integrating the taxes in the prices : there's no difference between businesses, thus no need to bother the consumers with it -- in the end, they will pay something that includes the taxes, wherever they go.
> I'd be OK with listing taxes up front (but I will say that restaurants I've been to always highlight any mandatory fees besides normal sales tax on the menu) but I'm absolutely in favor of breaking out the cost of government services on the bill.
You mean like basically everywhere in the world where your receipt does show "of which VAT rate A% : X, rate B% : Y, Special Tax: Z" ?
At the Co-op supermarket in our little UK town (population 3000) they’ve even just replaced the shelf price tickets with tiny colour displays.
And this problem is harder than some might think. I knew someone who lived on a street that was a "dividing line" for this stuff: same zip code, same city, but one side had a 9% sales tax, the other side had around 7%. We tested a lot of online stores and none of them got it right. Including Amazon.
In that same way they know what price to show you.
Did you miss the part about it being calculated in the cart? That’s after you’ve made the decision to purchase, a decision which presumably included the price. I would refuse to give every vendor my address just to see a price.
How does it work now? If you don't give your address, but the price depends on your address, how does the store know how much to charge you? If you don't have to give your ID then surely you just say you're from the lowest tax location?
It only really matters where the goods are delivered.
I don’t want to give my address to see the price. After I’ve decided to buy the thing, I’m okay disclosing who I am. But simply to see the price?
Also, if I’m a retailer and people are giving me their address before I price them, on what planet am I not going to use that to help me price discriminate?
Taxes don't change every street.
Ha. Oh boy. I remember when an engineer at a POS system start-up said something similar. It's like when someone decides they're going to roll their own time zone calculation.
In case you're curious, yes, two people in the same city can be in different counties, different school districts, different water boards, et cetera. Each of those typically has taxing authority. And this is before we get into crap like urban enterprise zones [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:New_Jersey_Urban_Ente...
Also, Apple Park is in Cupertino the city but not the school district.
I've seen cases where a neighborhood was split. Two near-identical houses, but one had less than half the property tax of the one next to it.
I live near a place called Westlake Village that straddles the LA County/Ventura County line. In LA County, Westlake Village is a city. In Ventura County, Westlake Village is a neighborhood within Thousand Oaks, and it has a different tax rate. But both mailing addresses use Westlake Village as the city.
Similarly, I have friends that live in Newbury Park, and that's what is on his mailing address. But Newbury Park is just a neighborhood within Thousand Oaks.
The location detectors are notoriously bad. I'm either placed in some town in Washington (multiple states from me) or somewhere else that does have different local tax than my part of my state.
It also doesn't work for online sales, where the final price can depend on the final destination of the goods or service. e.g. the taxes cannot be displayed until you've been given a street level address.
For me for example even my zip code spans 3 different cities with different tax codes, my street is literally one block from a different city in one direction, and about 5 blocks to another. \o/
They really shouldn't be advertising false claims in the first place.
>It also doesn't work for online sales, where the final price can depend on the final destination of the goods or service. e.g. the taxes cannot be displayed until you've been given a street level address.
That one has an easy solution: Just ask for the destination.
So basically what you’re suggesting is banning any ads (besides billboards etc.) from advertising any prices? How does that benefit consumers at all?
Just to be clear, you're suggesting that all pricing be removed from all advertising nationwide. This would clearly be to the detriment of the consumer.
> That one has an easy solution: Just ask for the destination.
Again, this is to the customer's detriment. They have to provide their personal information just to see the price of any item on any website they visit? And that's somehow worse than having to mentally add a percentage to any price they see until checkout? You must be kidding.
If you have a practical alternative that could somehow allow for advertising with prices that include tax, I'd love to hear it. (Just to make sure we're on the same page ahead of time: amending the Constitution to strike the Tenth Amendment so that the Federal Government can prevent states from levying their own taxes is not "practical".)
Localized advertising as you put it, with included tax info, cannot work for: TV, radio, billboards, internet advertising, and is not useful to consumers for seat advertising, bus stops, etc.
Circulars only work because they can be printed in large numbers and delivered cheaply because they are delivered to every house in a region. Except delivery regions are by zip code, not by city or municipality - my zip code has three cities in it. As I have said elsewhere I am around 10 houses from a different city, so postal delivery for circulars that includes the prices is out unless you include multiple prices, but that's still kind of busted because if I get a circular I might stop at the store in a different city along my commute.
So now if I see a "full price" from X different ads, which "full price" is correct for where I would be shopping? Hence what matters in this environment is that all advertisers are providing a complete price where the only difference is the tax.
If the tax people were paying was transparent it would help people to comparison shop where they paid lower prices. I really see it as win-win.
And even if there was a carve-out for non-location-specific advertising, at a bare minimum brick and mortar stores (and restaurants) should display the prices they actually expect you to pay.
They aren't false advertising, they say "$X + tax and fees", this law is about removing the "and fees" bs where the seller is actually charging more than the advertised price but pretending it's a nebulous fee they didn't set.
I also think you may not be understand the degree of BS. My partner and I were recently buying a new car, and not one car dealership was advertising a true price for their cars. Multiple dealers had something that they literally stated was a "market price adjustment fee", that was not given until you were in the process of purchasing the car. These "fees" were 5-10 thousand dollars on a 30k car.
> That one has an easy solution: just ask for the destination.
So you would be ok if the first step in shopping online is giving the site your street address? you're saying that you could not price compare online without first providing your address to every company you were looking at.
I'm assuming you aren't in the US, so you aren't familiar with how its governance works. Every state, county, and incorporated city can have its own sales and service taxes. It doesn't matter if you think that's a questionable setup - the US constitution guarantees that right at at least the state level, and most states have similar laws guaranteeing some amount of that power to county and city governments, so it is literally impossible to remove this structure. So this issue is how do you make this law work, given the constraints of how the US government is constructed. "Solutions" that require any kind of unification of governance are almost certainly unconstitutional (again this separation of governance is a part of the US bill of rights).
2. Online sales you won't even be able to calculate it until the customer puts in their shipping information. And no, they can't figure that out beforehand as there are a myriad of reasons why where their IP is does not mean where it's being shipped to, which is where the taxes need to be calculated.
Like, how quickly?
<1 day? otherwise it shouldnt be a problem
It sounds like your legislature spend all their time setting taxes?
If we locate the same product on the Amazon US site, it's $499.99 before tax. Amazon has two choices: show their price before tax or require shipping information from the user to see a price at all. (An estimated geolocation is not precise enough to determine a price.) For most consumers, I suspect seeing a pre-tax price upfront is better than having to provide personal information to see a price at all.
That explains online sales, but let's address brick and mortar retail. Imagine you go to Best Buy to comparison shop against Amazon and the price says $550 including tax. Is tax on this item in this location 10%? Or is it 5% but Best Buy's base price is higher than MSRP? It's up to me to find out the local tax rate and do the math. Let's say they agree to price-match Amazon; the clerk will need a function on the register to input a pre-tax price to facilitate this.
So, given this complexity and disparity, US manufacturers list MSRP without tax. Retailers display pre-tax prices for marketing and competitive reasons, generally never exceeding MSRP. Customers have come to expect this nationwide, so changing now would be challenging. (There are other good reasons to stick with pre-tax, too. In grocery stores, for example, pre-tax prices are very useful for SNAP beneficiaries.)
Do I think it would be useful to display tax calculations on signage in-store? Absolutely, and for some goods in some states, they do. But without laws or customer demand, retailers have no incentive to put themselves at a competitive disadvantage.
In my eastern European country even biggest supermarkets can change all labels overnight (I even bet they can can do at least twice daily - albeit with here and there confusions when there multiple labels for same good)
It is not like these shops hop hourly between taxes...
The same chocolate might have a different price depending on the store I go to as well and that doesn't seem to be a problem at all.
I have literally never seen e-ink price labels in a store in the US. I'm sure they exist, but I would bet are present in fewer than 1% of stores here.
It’s always fascinating when Americans have problems other countries don’t have, and just throw their hands in air saying “welp nothing we can do about it”
For example: in most countries you include sales tax in your advertisement, because why wouldn't you? In the US there is no countrywide sales tax, there are some states with literally no sales tax, and then there are states with high sales tax to compensate for zero income tax (which is excitingly regressive taxation).
Then inside the states each county can have its own array of sales and service taxes, which can also vary according to the goods and services involved, and finally individual cities in those counties can also have their own.
Core to this is that the US constitution explicitly enshrines federalism in the tenth amendment (the last part of the "bill of rights"), that explicitly limits the power of the federal government.
I think this is the part that non-Americans fail to understand; we have no central tax authority and that principle is enshrined in our Constitution. Like it or not, so long as the US exists in its current form, so too does our wildly disparate tax code.
So the problem is that your rule impacts the prices everywhere that you see a price: any price you see online, in a poster, in a magazine, in a newspaper, in a mailer, on tv, or hear over the radio cannot include the correct taxes for where you pay for or receive the product/service.
The only place that can have the correct price is an in brick and mortar shop at the final point of sale, and even then some prices can be impacted by things like whether you're a retiree, disabled, veteran, etc. The lack of tax in the price is annoying but is predictable and is consistent. Failing to include the relevant taxes does not impact the relative cost of anything on the shelf. If you choose product A because it's the cheapest, it will still be cheapest once tax is applied. The problem addressed by this bill is when product A is the cheapest on the shelf, but has a secret fee that no other product has, that you don't find out about until checkout.
Legislation that said "you must include the final paid price in any price" in the US literally means "you cannot advertise a price for the product".
To be clear, if you go to an online store, then your rule means none of the listings can include any price information until you provide the final delivery address. Good luck comparing prices.
Hence the law says "your advertised/stated/sticker price must be the full price including any 'fees' and similar that are not set by a government agency".
That is it fixes the only thing that it is possible to fix: prices online including "fees" that are really just part of the price. In addition to being odious and anti-competitive I would also argue that those "fees" are attempted tax evasion to create a fake price for sales, and similar taxes.
Would I like the listed price to be the actual real price being charged? of course, the only people who disagree are also the ones abusing the "fee" BS that this law bans. But any law that attempted to do that by mandating inclusion of taxes in prices would instantly mean that advertisements in the US (I guess technically just CA in this case) would be unable to include any price information.
So is it annoying that when I see prices in advertisements I have to remember to add some % to the price? of course. Is being unable to fix that a reason we should also have to allow retailers to add completely arbitrary and fake "fees" that are a mandatory part of the price that the retailer (or whatever) has complete control over?
I would say the argument is no, we should not allow that, and that's what this law bans.
It sounds like you're saying that because we can't fix the pricing to include taxes everywhere, we shouldn't stop companies from having fake fees?
And that is bullshit. In India every manufacturer is mandated to specify MSRPs that are inclusive of all applicable taxes everywhere. The US can have the same thing too, and remove all complexity altogether so that each item will have a uniform benchmark price against which different stores and retailers can show discounts on.
And by the way, India's taxation is much, much more arbitrary and toxic than US taxation, and has a similar kind of structure with various local taxes piling up on federal taxes. Companies still make it work.
The whole point is that there is no set sales tax that is present everywhere.
I will try to make this clear, step by step.
In the US, the federal government does not, and can not, set any kind of federal sales tax, service tax, or similar.
Every state is free to set its own sales and service taxes. The states have set sales taxes from 0% to 7.25%.
In each state, each county can also set their own additional sales taxes.
In each county, each city can also set their own additional sales taxes.
So that total combined tax for any given location in the US can range from 0% (in four states) to 13.5%.
That 13.5% number? That's in Alabama where the state sales tax is only 4% and the average sales tax (state + county + city) is less than 9%. That's just one state.
The 7.25% sales is California, where total sales tax varies from 7.25% to 10.5% (the 10.5% is only in one city).
For a product in the US to include an MSRP that included all taxes it would have to include hundreds, if not thousands, of prices and the cities, counties, or zip codes that those apply to.
This is before you get to those taxes changing regularly.
When we are talking about the insane numbers of tax rates in the US here, we are talking about GST.
When we talk about cities that set their own tax rate, this isn't some population driven thing, its a specific legal entity.
To try and reinforce this, let's consider just the San Francisco Bay Area in California. In this region there are 101 municipalities, each of which can have their own additional sales tax rates, on top of the sales tax rates from nine counties. The population of these municipalities range from 1500 people to a bit over 1 million. For the bulk of these there is literally no space between the cities. Take my house, it's in Oakland, but if I walk past one house on the corner, and then about 10 houses west the houses are no longer in Oakland, they're in Emeryville, which can have it's own sales tax.
Just in my commute to/from work I drive through I think 10 different sales tax rates. This is ignoring any special sales tax rates: some but not all cities have different tax rates for soda, cigarettes, etc.
And understand this cannot be changed, any law that tried to change this would fall to the CA constitution (which limits state government control of local governments), and any thing that tried to remove this control from the states fails due to the US bill of rights (the part of the constitution that also guarantees freedom of religion, guns (sigh), etc). This restriction on the control higher level government has on lower level/state/local governments is fundamental to the construction of US government.
Thanks for your detailed reply!
Always fascinating when non Americans can't understand that different places have different rules.
For brick-and-mortar stores, the store can quite easily calculate the final price of an item on its own. Sales taxes do change on occasion, but likely less often than the pricing of the items themselves do, so there's no added burden in having to update them due to tax changes.
Currently, consumers can generally tell if they are getting a reasonable price by comparing the MSRP they see in an ad against the price they see in store. For example, if the nationally advertised price of an Xbox is $500 and Best Buy has it for $500, I know I'm not being swindled.
But if the in-store price is $550? I guess I have to haul out my calculator and ask for the store's tax rate so I can determine whether or not Best Buy is ripping me off and I should take my business elsewhere.
Ideally, they'd show pre-tax price, tax rate, and calculated total price on every tag. Maybe, one day, we'll see action on this in a state or two, but I don't suspect it is high on the lists of any lawmakers.
Tax boundaries do not follow zip code boundaries.
To actually find the right tax rate you need the full address, including suite or apartment number because there are cases where a tax boundary runs between different suites at the same street address.
Also this is not just for online stores that ship something. It also applies if you are selling a downloadable good like a game or music, or selling memberships to your site.
Zip codes represent mail routes, so they're not actually polygons but a set of points (mailboxes), so they don't really even have boundaries.
The Census Bureau has polygons made from those points, but they're not official.
Is that on top of VAT?
Why are taxes and govt fees exempt? This reeks of "rules for thee but not for me." Either to goal is to avoid misleading customers with low advertised prices, or it's not. For example, California has a ~50 cents/gallon fuel tax. Can gas stations start advertising prices that are 50 cents lower than they actually charge and be compliant with this law?
I wish gas stations showed taxes separately, but I'm guessing retail gas stations aren't the ones collecting and remitting those taxes. It's probably taken earlier in the supply chain.
Including taxes and fees in the advertised price won't prevent stores (or anyone else) from making it clear what percentage of that price comes from taxes and government fees. I'd love to see more stores provide an itemized breakdown of those fees so that we can see how much of the price to blame on greedy vendors vs sneaky governments.
What I want most of all though is to only ever pay what the listed price of an item is. I want to be able to walk in with a single $5 bill and pay for something that says it costs $5 and have that be the end of it. It should really just be that simple. Other countries do it. We can too.
But wow, the things it would do to national marketing. Imagine an iPhone launch. Tim Cook gets to the pricing slide and it says, "Starting at $1099 in Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon. Check your local store for your pricing in your location." That's our cue to mentally add our local tax rate like we do already, now with the added benefit of feeling bad about where we live.
This bill is very clear that the target is "prices" that reject parts of the price that are entirely set by the person selling the goods or services. e.g. Ticketmaster, etc's entirely bogus "service" charges, or airbnb's that say $x/night but have a $500 cleaning "fee".
If anything, this just encourages lobbying and corruption. If you have a restaurant, you can't just covertly charge a 5% worker benefit fee. But you could if you're part of a restaurant lobby that turns that 5% worker benefit fee into a 5% restaurant tax that benefits restaurant workers!
Independent of the bill's goal, I also think that seeing all govt fees and taxes upfront might be a useful exercise in California and elsewhere. When fees are hidden, people forget about them and don't evaluate them. But if they are front and center, then that would hopefully make politicians more accountable. For example, the California train project has spent something like $10b so far and there's nothing to really show for it. And that money came from somewhere, but it's easy to forget about that if you're not reminded constantly. But if every driver in California paid $1 extra on every gas bill for the last 20 years for a "train tax" that was on the receipt, then maybe people would hold their government more accountable. (This is an apolitical comment: caring more can mean cancelling the train project, or funding it 3x more. Whatever constituents think is best.)
If I'm price-comparing hotels, and I see one that's $100/night, and another that's $75/night, I know that the cost may be higher due to taxes, but it will be higher by the exact same percentage for both of the hotels.
But if I go and book a room at the $75/night hotel, show up, and find that they're hitting me with a surprise $50/day "resort fee", then I'm going to feel cheated, and wish that'd I'd booked at the $100/night hotel (assuming that one doesn't have a resort fee, anyway).
The deceptive hotel tried (and succeeded!) in attracting me with a misleadingly low price, when I would have been able to get a better price from a different, non-deceptive hotel. Taxes really have nothing to do with that; people aware of how things are usually done in the US will know that no business would list taxes included unless they were required to, as doing so (when others do not) is essentially a competitive disadvantage.
I do agree with you that a better new law would require businesses to include taxes in their prices. But that's frankly so far outside the norm in the US that I wouldn't be surprised if the bill's author(s) expected it would fail to pass with that kind of language in it, so they limited it to something they actually thought would pass. Baby steps! Incremental improvements are better than nothing.
Also consider that there are many weird people in the US who like having sales taxes added later and itemized out, due to some misguided belief that including taxes up front would let the government raise taxes without anyone knowing. This is related to the unfortunate phenomenon of the IRS not being allowed to essentially do our income taxes for us.
1) IMHO this doesn't help. If I don't know what the taxes are, then knowing that they will be similarly high on either transaction doesn't help me with budgeting. Just like it's hard to know if a $75/night hotel is within my budget without knowing the size of its resort fee, it's also hard to know if it's within my budget without knowing if the tax on it is 8% or 18%.
2) FWIW this varies by county, so it's easy to have two hotels that are a mile apart but with different tax rates. To pick a random state, here is an old table of hotel taxes in Florida by county: https://www.floridasalestax.com/florida-tax-law-blog/2015/ja.... These taxes vary from 7% to 13%, so if you're picking hotels next to a county border, the difference can be noticeable.
Company A: $100
Company B: $140
Company C: $150
Company D: $155
Currently, when you go to buy from any of these companies they all add the hypothetical 10% taxes you would be required to pay, but company A also adds $60 in "service fees", Company B adds $20, Company C adds $10, and company D becomes the cheapest.
If you remove the bullshit fees the advertised prices are falsely excluding then the advertised prices give you the actual real relative position.
Hence there is value in this law, even if it doesn't force the taxes to be included.
Now your example of hotels is a worthwhile extension to this, where you could say "if the location of the purchase or service is fixed, the listed price must include all applicable taxes", but there's a clear benefit to banning the BS "fees".
This is ignoring the whole tax avoidance/evasion I believe these "fees" are also being used for.
Deceptive pricing is extremely annoying, as are stealth price increases.
Like tips?
Much like restaurants that want to charge the customer for credit-card fees. Oh, you want to do that? I'll show you why restaurants were among the first to adopt credit payments even with merchant fees: because when you pay cash, some employees steal. And they steal a lot.
Expected tips are known up front, they are variable, and I certainly think it's totally fine to not tip in places where it's not usually expected, "flipping around the iPad" be damned.
We can make the argument that it is hard for Amazon to show you the price of widget X, as it changes where it gets shipped.
But for a hotel it doesn't matter whether you fly in from Alaska (no sales tax) or Los Angeles (9.25% I believe)
You pay the rate of the state and city where the hotel is at.
This is a good point. When I go to a coffee shop and order a latte I am buying a latte and the appreciation of the person that makes it. If they think I’m a dick it renders my coffee undrinkable and the comfort in knowing that I’m liked should be free.
I stopped going to restaurants that charge those fees, but it's become so widespread that it can be a challenge to find any that don't at this point.
They may be able to keep them if they allow customers a way to opt-out, but this is less clear.
Sales taxes are in general regressive and harm lower-income people the most, so they should be visible and attributable to government.
I have no desire to learn what the tax rate is for X in any state at all (since I cannot vote to change it in any case), what I am interested in day-to-day is the all-in price of whatever I’m about to buy.
Eliminating junk fees (looking at you, AT&T) is a net win for reducing cognitive load. The idea I should have to learn the tax rates of the multiple jurisdictions I may or may not be in just to serve your political views is fucking asinine.
Oh please. When taxes go up, people notice. In California, new taxes have to be approved directly by voters, even. If you choose not to be civically engaged enough to notice new taxes, that's your problem.
This is the same dumb argument people use for not allowing the IRS to send us a pre-filled tax return. Instead, we flush billions of dollars a year down the toilet on tax prep.
Prop 218 [1] is unique to California.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_California_Proposition_21...
Many countries also exempt sales tax from essential groceries, which is not true for all US states. So the idea that the US model is somehow good for lower-income consumers is laughable.
①However, by law the price tag is required to also show the with tax（税込） price if displaying the without tax price.
After all, the company is only collecting them for governments.
Yet nothing prevents companies from showing all fees the company charges. All of them.
This is what the new law addressees.
cf. https://gizmodo.com/comcast-fcc-doesnt-want-to-list-all-its-...
You can also find other recent articles about this kind of thing
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Capitalism is not the same as a working market.
A working market depends on many things, including price transparency. If people don't know how much they are paying for a service of unknown quality, they can't compare products and services.
Hidden fees are one way to prevent price transparency, but they are not the only one.
It may seem strange, but a working free market needs strong guidance. Laissez-faire capitalism will lead to broken markets with loss of freedom. There are too many ways to impede market competition. Here is a list of some, without claiming to be complete:
- Monopolies and oligopolies
- Cartels and collusion
- Confusion marketing (confusopoly)
- Hidden fees
- External costs
Especially external costs are insidious. This means that a company does not pay for everything it uses. For example, if a company lets it rip and pollutes a river instead of having its wastewater processed, it transfers the cost of pollution to everyone else.
When I was younger, I believed that capitalism would solve everything because of the invisible hand, a concept introduced by Adam Smith. The invisible hand is the idea that even if everyone egoistically optimizes their own benefits, there will be a natural collaboration that will achieve progress.
Today I know that this can work with a lot of strong guidance. One example: California has banned hidden fees.
Which is to say that if you wanted to pursue this, I doubt it would be worth your time being out of state.
Tons of places have tried to ban tipping and just include the service in the cost of the item. They nearly always revert because the best workers leave to make more money at a tipping joint.
Also, how are the tipped staff the "best workers"? They're just servers. All they have to do is take an order. It's incredible how much money they expect for this, when it's something that would be more efficiently done with an iPad. In US restaurants, they're even too lazy to bring the food for you; I guess they're too busy trying to act like the customer's new best friend.
Tipping was banned in seven US states about a hundred years ago. For the most part, People simply ignored the laws. They were all repealed or found unconstitutional after a couple decades. I am not aware of anywhere in the world where tipping a server is illegal.
> Also, how are the tipped staff the "best workers"? They're just servers. All they have to do is take an order.
"Best workers" would include highly competent servers who are a direct cause of repeat business. A good server adds to the experience beyond the food and ambiance and help turn new customers into regulars. Regulars are the lifeblood of most restaurants.
> It's incredible how much money they expect for this, when it's something that would be more efficiently done with an iPad.
Servers can make suggestions based on your preferences, make sure your dietary restrictions are handled, answer questions about the menu... these are experiences I have all the time and I'm certain an iPad would be worse.
> In US restaurants, they're even too lazy to bring the food for you; I guess they're too busy trying to act like the customer's new best friend.
Servers bring out the food I order. I don't even know how to respond beyond that.
Maybe you're just going to really bad restaurants?
What, by acting like their best friend? This is definitely something weird about America. Here outside America, it isn't like that at all. There's no tipping, and servers just give you what you ask, though of course they'll answer questions and such. But they don't socialize with you; I don't need to pay someone to act like my friend and chat with me. It's only in American restaurants that I've had this annoying experience.
For what it's worth, I have memories of extremely friendly waitstaff in Europe -- dare I say "American-esque". Just this summer, a French bartender in the Marais asked where we were from. When we answered "the US", she launched into a story about a trip she'd taken to New York. She talked about how much she loved seeing a Broadway show, Central Park, and MoMA. I watched her carry on with a British couple and many French patrons in the same way, returning to grab us another glass of wine and chat some more. The French people present seemed just as happy to chat with her as we were.
I have similar stories from London, Florence, Barcelona, and Tokyo (just off the top of my head). It's certainly not common, but I've seen it several times.
Americans often say most Europeans are stiff and uptight. Europeans often think the opposite of Americans. You seem to have a bit of a chip on your shoulder about it, but it's just a cultural difference that you're choosing to find distasteful.
In better-run countries, servers are actually paid a normal wage and we don't act haughty and make ourselves feel superior to others just because we can throw money at service workers like they're some kind of charity case.
So....basically nothing changes. You're always privy to the disclosure at the time of sale anyway when you see the charges right before you fork up your credit card.
Seems like legislators just needed some bullet points for resume padding.
I'd want to see some numbers here. But the fees might be directly predatory or they might just be high enough to offset the cost of actually overdrafting to the actual predatory behavior of trying to force people to bank more of their money with lower interest rates.
Would have to track down the actual law.
Banks also generally make it hard/impossible to opt out of overdraft, something that would probably be preferable to many customers. Overdraft fees are a huge source of income these days.
I had to have a huge argument with my local rep. She kept insisting "what if there isn't enough money to cover the transaction?" and did not seem to understand that it was perfectly acceptable to me for such a transaction to fail, rather than succeed and incur a substantial fee.
Don't get me started on the level of irritated you need to get a bank manager to void protocol, lol.
Smaller online banks & credit unions typically don’t have any fees now.
The same play dumb routine was very common here in the UK too. They made a ton of money on overdraft fees until 2020 when the law banned the outrageous fees.
It works a lot better than complaining on the internet!
Or are you implying that being poor means the bank should cover the overdraft?
What the hell?? My guess is banks have to talk to you because of regulations, but let's not pretend they wouldn't ignore you if they could.
1. historically poor person, they don't want to deal with them and just want to charge them the $35 per individual overdraft, or whatever insanely high charge it is.
2. Poor person works hours that make it impossible to visit or even call a bank. No really, working 1 job with insane hours or several jobs with even more insane hours are not uncommon for poor people.
3. They shouldn't be re-ordering charges in the first place to have the worst possible result and it continues to perpetuate the harm we place on those who have less.
Addendum: nevermind that during this whole time of unfortunate and now very slow because "mail" correspondence, especially when the circumstance described is of a bank re-ordering transactions such as to cause the most possible overdrafts given a time range, this person's whole paycheck they need to survive may have been trapped or eaten by the overdraft fees if there's 4 or 5 of them. Yes, some people make that little.
Yes. Time. Poor people don’t have time to argue with every company that nickel and dimes them. Most people are working during bank hours. They’re working multiple jobs so they can keep the lights on.
A $35 overdraft fee hurts but it’s not enough to sacrifice a shift where you are guaranteed to make $70 for the possibility of getting $35 back (which is by no means guaranteed since they signed a contract that says the bank can take $35 from them).
$35 is a very strategic number, isn’t it? It’s just enough to maximize profits but not quite enough to get most people to navigate customer service, which is likely going to go nowhere.
For example, if you overdraft by $1 you could be charged $35 as a cost of this “loan”. No one should take out a loan at 3500% interest. You’d get a better rate at a payday lender.
Since this “loan” amount is not related to the cost of the service I’d call it a junk fee.
Now I'm $30 in the hole and I didn't even get my cellphone bill paid, just a fee for the privilege of having tried to do it.
it was such an awful racket that was only allowed to go on as long as it did because it mostly just affected poor people.
This is interesting. I expect we'll see more of "first 10 customers" or "while supplies last" (15 seconds).
> (11) Advertising furniture without clearly indicating that it is unassembled if that is the case.
Ikea is worried.
> (19) Inserting an unconscionable provision in the contract.
As in every click-through license "agreement" ever?
Good thing California uses First Past the Post voting, making a two party system a inevitably. Must be cheaper to purchase the government for the 1%.
This is a very bad way to analyze politics. Politicians actually believe in the things they're doing.
FPTP is a major part of the reason why there can be a wide disparity in position on currently salient issues between a legislative supermajority and a governor of the same party, since it is why we have ridiculously “big tent” parties.
And IRV for local elections, but you don't see micro-parties in SF.
No, most of them are caused by FPTP [0], which very strongly encourages low dimensionality of political dialog and a two-party system with two roughly-equal national parties, with a strategic interest in negative campaigning and alienating voters, since driving slightly more of your major opponents voters away is just as effective as winning over votes.
Some are more precisely caused by legislative bodies with independently elected members in single-member districts.
> and California doesn’t use the usual primary system because it has jungle primaries.
Jungle primaries in no way mitigate the effects of FPTP on duopoly (they aren’t much different than majority-runoff, except that there is always a runoff even if there is a first-round majority, and the two rounds are separate by a much greater interval of time than is usually the case for majority-runoff.
> And IRV for local elections, but you don’t see micro-parties in SF.
IRV (1) is not used for most local elections in California, and (2) offers little if any mitigation of the effects of FPTP elections (it is, as the name suggests, modelled very closely on majority-runoff voting), and (3) is only used in SF for elections which are explicitly non-partisan.
[0] “FPTP” is used in a somewhat loose sense here, encompassing single-winner vote-one election methods including majority-runoff as well as plurality (FPTP in the narrow sense).
Beyond that, it's fully expected, is simple to deal with, it's solved as it is. There's nothing to do here. Nothing to fix.
Also related:
California AG and state senators introduce bill to ban hidden fees - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34870752 - Feb 2023 (377 comments)
It seems it taps into a sentiment that’s allll over the place but not based in the reality of this bill
If a company advertised one price then charges another price, that is false advertising and fraud.
Why pass a new law against hidden fees?
Just prosecute the crooks under the laws we have had since our nation was founded.
Where I live (major southeast US city) there's a 50/50 chance there will be some random bullshit fee (sometimes even more than one!) tacked onto the bill (and I'm not talking about tax or a tip).
The types of fees I'm referring to are included at the bottom of the menu in 2pt font. You're typically already halfway through ordering before discovering that you'll randomly be charged an extra 20% because the restaurant relies on misleading consumers about their prices to draw them in.
The bogus fees are always taxed, and then the full amount is used to compute a recommended tip (even at food kiosks.)
One thing I did learn was to check on things like ISPs beforehand. You know the address of the place, so you can visit your preferred ISPs' websites and see if they offer service before you sign the lease. Ditto for cell service; when initially looking at a new place, I'd always check my cell phone to make sure I'd get decent service inside.
Just like CCPA. I wish other states would join.
“Think of all the mom-and-pop businesses with deceptive pricing models that will be put out of business by government overreach”?
I hope this means they're banning the common US practice of omitting sales taxes and tips from prices.
It’s typically not disclosed until after you eat, and varies from city to city.
Splitting it out is no more sensible that adding "building rent" or "ingredient cost" as extra line items on the final bill.
If you add a 4% kitchen fee to the bill, my typical 18-20% tip becomes 14-16%, exactly the same as if you added a "parties of 6 or more have an automatic 18% service fee" then my tip becomes 0% (on top of the 18% you're already charging me).
If you try to sneak in a 4% fee that wasn't disclosed, let's just say that my tip changes, but does not become larger, if I discover your deception.
It's unclear to my why you're equating tips with the bill (which 4% kitchen fee is part of, it's not gratuity). One of these goes to the peons, the other goes to the restaurant.
Your approach is just doing the the restaurateur's dirty work of fleecing the employees' tips by shifting it directly into the restaurant's pot. Congratulations, working as intended from the restaurateur's perspective.
the entire "making up shorted earnings via tips" is utter bullshit
edit: s/guest/customer/
This doesn’t make it right, of course.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230814142251/https://www.sfchr...
Also a problem for sales taxes because online stores don't know how much sales tax to charge until they have a shipping address.
Turo
who else is sweating right now
I can already see the gotcha capitalism lobby of life insurance, cell phone carriers, spas, cruise ships, yearbook photographers, and payday lenders fighting this in court.
Unfortunately Newsom is also doing some strange presidential run attempt where he's vetoed a bunch of popular bills everyone likes, including a new public housing program AB309.
Unfortunately the law seems to ignore hotel taxes/government fees, which are often substantial.
Car dealerships are also notorious for the practice of continually adding fees after you agree to buy for the advertised price.
It also makes it harder for companies (phone companies, cable companies and ISPs, utilities, etc.) to enact stealth rate increases by adding bogus fees to your monthly bill.
Whenever-ago it was hotels started doing that the extra fees were fairly nominal, and it was easy to shrug at them. Last year my wife and I stayed at a hotel (thankfully paid for by her work) with a $50 per-person/night "resort fee". In the event, neither of us used those amenities (though yes, we still had to pay: I asked), so that's not what that fee was _really_ about. It's entirely an obfuscation.
This bill adds nothing to the state budget. Allowing price discovery (and therefore free markets) to work, is what regulation should do, even under a fairly libertarian theory of government. It's certainly worthy of legislative time.
Hard to come up with any answer other than “to mislead consumers”
https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Relativ...